Alan Keyes
January 1996

[Excerpt]

I'll take as an example the discussion of welfare reform that's been going on for a long time. And, whether you look at it from the point of view of Clinton or the Republicans and the Congress, people have come forward with their welfare reform proposals--and the ones that seem to gain the broadest support and interest are the ones that are based on the premise that we ought to stop paying people to do nothing and put those welfare people to work.

Do you like that idea? Who likes that idea? Stop paying people to do nothing and put the welfare people to work--basic premise of welfare reform. Yes or no? Come on, be honest about it. Yes or no? We have support for that; admit it.

I just wonder though, if the folks who are following that premise have thought it through. I don't think we have. See, who are the welfare people we're so anxious to put to work? Single, unwed mothers. And that means that the basic premise of welfare reform is put the mothers to work in the work place.

Has it occurred to us that in the last thirty or forty years, we structured welfare so as to drive fathers out of the home, leaving a lot of these families fatherless. And in these absent-father families, we are now saying that the solution is to pluck the mother out of the home and put her to work in the work place. Some of you who are so anxious to put these people to work, tell me who's going to raise the children now? Who is going to care for them as they need to be cared for and, as increasingly every study and survey shows, we must care for them if they are to be raised properly. It's not happening. This is stupid, and I'll say it to your face!

We're following leaders who have their priorities wrong, who are looking at things through money lenses and economic lenses that shut out the real problem, and therefore, shut out the real solution. Because the problem with welfare today isn't that they're not working. My wife doesn't work; she works--at the work place, I mean--she works at home, you know. And I'll tell you something. The work that she does there is far more important than the work done by many people who go out there and collect a paycheck--far more important.

So, if you want to tell me that the big problem with mothers today is that there aren't enough of them in the work place, I will tell you that the big problem with the country today is that there are not enough of them at home. You can like it or dislike it, as you like.

But, I'll also say this, if we put the emphasis on putting welfare people to work, we're doing it because we're so blasted by materialism that we don't understand moral causes. And we follow leaders who absolutely can't even begin to articulate a moral vision for this country. They can't.

I was watching Mr. Dole the other night--meaning no offense, he's a nice enough guy--and Bill Clinton ran circles around him. I'll tell you something--looked real lackluster. We put that man up for us in 1996, those of you who are Republicans, forget about it: even Bill Clinton can beat what we saw the other night. We can't afford this, you understand? Because somebody who presents something that has some conviction and heart and real passion to it is going to win more of a following in America than somebody who comes up with all this dry-bones, less-government stuff without understanding why less government is important.

Less government and less spending and budget discipline are not important in and of themselves. Because, I'll tell you, if Americans thought that all that money was actually doing some good, they'd dig deeper into their pockets and they'd give more. We are not a stingy people. We are not a greedy people. We are not a people looking to squeeze every last dollar out for ourselves--that is a vicious lie. And if the Republican leadership continues to speak as if they think that the American people have those pinched and high-bound characteristics, we're going to go down to defeat. Americans aren't a stingy people and we're not interested in less government and less spending because we're stingy and selfish.

But what we have begun to realize is that more government and more spending has resulted in what? It has resulted in the destruction of the moral and material foundations of that institution which is far more important, far more compelling, and far more capable of dealing with our real problems than the government. In order to fund this government, in order to expand its power, we have destroyed the moral and material foundations of family life. That is what we are fighting for.

I, at least, am not in this race just fighting for less government and fighting for less spending for it's own sake. I am fighting for the restoration of the strength and integrity of the marriage-based family--the institution through which, if we are decent people, we care for those who should be cared for. Because Clinton is right about that, you know. And that's one of the reason that, in spite of all his faults, he gives good speeches and people still listen. Because when he gets up and says we've got to care about the children, he's right. And when he gets up and says we've got to care about the elderly, he's right. And when he gets up and says we have to care about each other, he's right.

Where he's wrong is in thinking that government money, and government bureaucracy, and government structures represent a decent form of caring!